Mascagni's first and most successful work has become an opera classic as it features elements of the Greek tragedy, mixing up religious and archaic elements. It's a story of love, passion, jealousy and restored honor in bloodshed. Directors Di Gangi and Giacomazzi set this traditional Cavalleria in a Sicilian village of the 1940s where the buildings are rather bare and the piazza is the stage for private as well as public drama. Conductor Valerio Galli is at the head of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, one of the best in Italy. Good performance reviews for the whole cast. "The star of the show is Angelo Villari, who plays an impeccable Turiddu. Thanks to his warm and fiery voice, the Italian tenor adds credibility to a complex character, torn between passion and sensitivity... Soprano Alexia Voulgaridou portrays a perfect, melancholic Santuzza. She possesses an excellent vocal instrument and her voice is lyrical, dramatic and emotionally engaging... Marina Ogii is a Lola imbued with charm and sensuality, with a warm and cleverly projected voice... Elena Zilio is a well-centered and engaging Mamma Lucia, with a magnetic stage presence and an incredible expressive talent... Lorenzo Fratini is at the head of the chorus which provides excellent and powerful contributions to the performance. " (connessiallopera. It)

This album features a new arrangement for harpsichord and guitar of Bach's six trio Sonatas for organ BWV 525-530. Extravagantia duo, two talented and learned young musicians, takes the challenge to confront themselves with Bach's organ masterpieces with a new and fresh approach which aims to explore from an unusual perspective a piece of traditional repertoire. Luigi Accardo and Francesco Molmenti dig deeply into Bach's historical background and create a musical language of their own. Francesco Molmenti began studying guitar at age 11. He went on to earn his diploma at the Conservatory of Trieste in 2003. He has won several national and international competitions since. Currently, he performs as a soloist, with the Res Intimae guitar trio, and the present ensemble, the Extravagantia Duo. Luigi Accardo was born in Cagliari. He graduated in Piano from the Conservatory of Cagliari and in Harpsichord from the Conservatory of Piacenza.

Nicola Vaccaj belonged to the Neapolitan school: pupil of Paisiello and contemporary of Rossini, whose fame somehow obscured his own, he was well known and appreciated at his time, to the point that an extract from the last Act of his Giulietta e Romeo was chosen to substitute the same aria in Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi for an 1832 performance and this shift has remained common practice until the end of the 19th century. Therefore it's hard to believe that Vaccaj's most notable success was neglected for such a long time as it "is an opera that could easily hold it's own among the better-known works in the bel canto canon. It has taut plot, with a strong libretto, written by Romani, and is full of well-constructed ensemble pieces"(Alan Neilson - Operawire) Within a traditional, 16th century setting, director Cecilia Ligorio choses to convey a sense of doom and tragedy which the entire work is imbued with, from the choice of costumes and settings to the stage lighting. "It really was a well-paced, and visually pleasing production that successfully captured the love and hatred which drives the narrative forward." (Alan Neilson - Operawire)

Johann Sebastian Bach's Clavier-�bung II elevates two differing national styles to create a pair of incomparable masterpieces. The Italian Concerto uses the spectacular effects available from a two-manual harpsichord to represent contrasts between different groups of instruments, while the French Overture, Bach's longest keyboard suite, explores French harmonies, rhythms, ornamentation and melodic invention in the dark and dramatic key of B minor. Both the multiple counterpoint of the Fantasia and Fugue in A minor and the unusual harmonic richness of the Sonata in D minor further represent Bach's mastery of the keyboard and genius as a composer.

Siegfried is the third in the tetralogy of music dramas that make up Der Ring des Nibelungen. It charts the progress of the young hero as he unshackles himself from the dwarf Mime, reforges his father’s sword to kill the dragon Fafner, and thus takes possession of the Ring which he ultimately gives to Brünnhilde to symbolize his devotion. Siegfried contains imperishably beautiful passages such as the Forest Murmurs, the profound psychological landscape of the Prelude to Act III and the great duet between Siegfried and Brünnhilde. This performance from Sofia Opera features an acclaimed all-Bulgarian cast.

"•The sound of the carillon began to be imitated in works that took inspiration from fairy tales and legends, automatons, literary themes, or magical/surreal atmospheres. • Various imitations of carillons were hence created through the expressive means of the piano. • Among them there are simple motives (generally rêveries and berceuses), humorous and grotesque carillons and other pieces that reproduce the various tinkling sounds of music boxes, snuff-boxes and clocks. • Featuring pianist Dario Müller."

• Franz Liszt composed his many spectacular paraphrases for performance during and after his days as a touring, concertizing artist • Italian pianist Andrea Trovato has won several prizes for piano in national and international competitions, and has toured successfully across Europe. Among the several dozen works in his repertoire are quite a number of Liszts.

Paganini: Centone di sonate for Violin & Guitar, Vol. 1

Federico Maria Sardelli is perhaps one of the word’s most notable experts of Vivaldi music as well as a versatile and gifted artist (he’s a painter, a novelist, a conductor, a composer and a musicologist). He wrote many books about Vivaldi including a prize-winning novel. Twice nominated for the Grammy Awards (in 1996 and 1999), since 2007 he has been in charge of the Vivaldi catalogue (The Ryom Vivaldi Werkverzeichnis). He is the founder and the director of the baroque ensemble "Modo Antiquo". The Russian violinist Anton Martynov completes this remarkable cast for an outstanding Vivaldi. The ensemble Modo Antiquo performs here with aplomb alongside Martynov and Sardelli. Modo Antiquo is a protagonist of the current Vivaldi renaissance, having premiered on stage and in recording operas such as Arsilda, Tito Manlio, and others. Committed to the divulgation of Vivaldi’s rarest and unpublished operas, Modo Antiquo regularly records the latest rediscoveries as world premiere recordings.

Starting from the work of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, this release aims to analyze some features of the painting and music of the early Italian Baroque, highlighting their creative specificities and their emotional substrate. Daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia was only remembered, until a few decades ago, for the scandal of the rape trial - filed against Agostino Tassi, one of her father's artistic partners, who raped her when she was seventeen - she had to wait over three hundred years to see her value as a painter fully recognized. The music is played by Accademia d'Arcadia, 13 musicians with period instruments and a singer. The 13 pieces performed correspond to 13 famous paintings of Artemisia. A full color booklet shows the 13 paintings with detailed info and texts, an interesting idea for a great emotional impact. An excellent lutenist, and fond of music, Artemisia Gentileschi had relationships with many famous musicians of her time. This program follows Artemisia's life through her stays in the major Italian cities (Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples) and features pieces by composers who were working in those cities in the same years. The most representative composers and pieces had been selected in order to better present an aesthetic and emotional path.

In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures began to inhabit secular but also sacred operas. These stock characters included the Neapolitan, the Calabrian and the Boy, and all three plus a fourth, 'The Spaniard', appear in a comic intermezzo inserted in the 1673 opera Il disperato innocente by the little-known Francesco Antonio Boero. This is the oldest surviving Neapolitan comic intermezzo, and, along with it's Prologue, seems to have been written by other authors. This video preserves a historically informed performance given by Antonio Florio with Pino de Vittorio that explores the tradition of the intermezzo in 17th century plots.

The three Italian choral works on this album cast new light on pre-existing musical material. Corrado Margutti's Missa Lorca fuses the words of Federico Garcia Lorca with an evocation of Monteverdi's polyphonic textures to create fascinating sounds, as the two movements from the Mass reveal. Pizzetti's Messa di Requiem, the first of his great choral compositions, offers a wealth of expressive detail notably the use of Gregorian chant in music of huge range and richness. Lorenzo Donati's Sicut Cervus fittingly concludes this selection as it threads music from Palestrina into his piece illuminating the past with vivid new colours.

In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures began to inhabit secular but also sacred operas. These stock characters included the Neapolitan, the Calabrian and the Boy, and all three plus a fourth, 'The Spaniard', appear in a comic intermezzo inserted in the 1673 opera Il disperato innocente by the little-known Francesco Antonio Boero. This is the oldest surviving Neapolitan comic intermezzo, and, along with it's Prologue, seems to have been written by other authors. This video preserves a historically informed performance given by Antonio Florio with Pino de Vittorio that explores the tradition of the intermezzo in 17th century plots.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Romancero gitano for mixed choir and guitar sets some of Federico Garcia Lorca's most evocative and intimate Andalusian poetry. Marked by dramatic contrasts the music fuses colouristic ideas with rich polyphonic writing - performed here in an accurate critical edition. Corrado Margutti's Rivers, designed to accompany Romancero gitano, is a kaleidoscope of forms, styles and images that pays homage to Castelnuovo-Tedesco as well as encoding hidden references to other musical luminaries, forming a musical journey through time and space.

In 1835 Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor made it's triumphant debut at the San Carlo in Naples. For it's Parisian appearance four years later as Lucie de Lammermoor, the composer went much further than merely Gallicising the heroine's first name, he subjected the opera to a condensation in which Lucie became the only woman in the entire cast. Donizetti's orchestration remains largely the same but the French influence is audible in new recitatives. This later version is no surrogate or mere abridgement, but, perhaps because of it's greater concision, is more brutal and emotional than the original.